As the capabilities of individual computer processors, data-storage devices, and other computer components have geometrically increased, over the past 50 years, and the volumes of such components have significantly decreased, the traditional single-processor and single-mass-storage-device computer architecture is gradually being replaced by similarly-sized, but much more powerful multi-device enclosures, including disk arrays that incorporate multiple mass-storage devices in a single enclosure and blade systems that incorporate multiple servers, each server including one or more processors, within a single enclosure. Multi-component enclosures simply connections between components, provide an integrated approach to power supply and environmental regulation, and may provide useful virtual interfaces to abstract the individual components to external entities.
While multi-component enclosures often provide enormous advantages over similarly capable collections of individual-component devices, multi-component enclosures may, at times, constrain or restrict components within the multi-component enclosures in order to provide common internal and external interfaces to the individual components. For example, in order to facilitate interoperability of, and the ability to easily replace and substitute, server modules in a blade system, all the server modules may be connected to external communications media through a common backplane, which may limit that transmission rates of the servers modules to a common, fixed transmission rate, despite the ability of servers to support different transmission rates when directly connected to communications media. Designers, developers, vendors, and users of multi-device enclosures have recognized the need to re-enable inherent flexibilities and capabilities of components within multi-component enclosures limited by shared interfaces, and the need to provide additional flexibilities and capabilities for individual components, in order to increase the usability and flexibility of the multi-device enclosures as a whole.